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El Nino Could Be The Most Powerful On Record, Scientists Say

El Nino Could Be The Most Powerful On Record, Scientists Say

By Rong-Gong Lin II and Rosanna Xia, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

LOS ANGELES — A key location of the Pacific Ocean is now hotter than recorded in at least 25 years, surpassing the temperatures during the record 1997 El Nino.

Some scientists say the readings show that this year’s El Nino could be among the most powerful on record — and even topple the 1997 El Nino from its pedestal.

“This thing is still growing and it’s definitely warmer than it was in 1997,” said Bill Patzert, climatologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge. As far as the temperature readings go, “it’s now bypassed the previous champ of the modern satellite era — the 1997 El Nino has just been toppled by 2015.”

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at Stanford University, called the temperature reading significant. It is the highest such weekly temperature above the average in 25 years of modern record keeping in this key region of the Pacific Ocean west of Peru.

“This is a very impressive number,” Swain said, adding that data suggest that this El Nino is still warming up. “It does look like it’s possible that there’s still additional warming” to come.

“We’re definitely in the top tier of El Nino events,” Swain said.

Temperatures in this key area of the Pacific Ocean rose to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit above average for the week of Nov. 11. That exceeds the highest comparable reading for the most powerful El Nino on record, when temperatures rose 5 degrees Fahrenheit above the average the week of Thanksgiving in 1997.

The 5.4 degree Fahrenheit recording above the average temperature is the highest such number since 1990 in this area of the Pacific Ocean, according to the National Weather Service.

El Nino is a weather phenomenon involving a section of the Pacific Ocean west of Peru that warms up, causing alterations in the atmosphere that can cause dramatic changes in weather patterns globally.

For the United States, El Nino can shift the winter track of storms that normally keeps the jungles of southern Mexico and Central America wet and moves them over California and the southern United States. The northern United States, like the Midwest and Northeast, typically see milder winters during El Nino.

Chart showing El Nino rainfall in Los Angeles Times. Contributed by the Los Angeles times

Chart showing El Nino rainfall in Los Angeles Times. Contributed by the Los Angeles times

The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center has already forecast a higher chance of a wet winter for almost all of California and the southern United States.

But the center’s deputy director, Mike Halpert, cautioned against reading too much into the record-breaking weekly temperature data.

El Nino has so far been underperforming in other respects involving changes in the atmosphere important to the winter climate forecast for California, he said.

One example: tropical rainfall has not extended from the International Date Line and eastward, approaching South America, as it did by this time in 1997.

“In 1997, that pattern has largely established itself,” Halpert said, but that pattern so far is “significantly weaker” than it was back then.

Still, Halpert said, “it’s not too late for things to develop.”

Patzert, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory climatologist, said the increase in ocean temperatures west of Peru was a result of a dramatic weakening of the normal east-to-west trade winds in the Pacific Ocean that were observed in October around the International Date Line.

That allowed the warm, tropical ocean waters in the western Pacific Ocean to surge to the Americas, leading to this increase in ocean temperatures observed last week.

The 1997 El Nino has been considered the strongest such event since the 1950s. The modern era of El Nino tracking came after the 1982-83 event, which came as a surprise and is considered the second strongest on record.

The 1997 El Nino was considered so strong and that scientists have been impressed that this El Nino could top that event.

Patzert likened it to the shocking defeat of the previously unbeaten Ultimate Fighting Championship champion Ronda Rousey last weekend by Holly Holm. Or, he added, like the dethroning of a grand champion in sumo wrestling.

This El Nino “just flipped the 1997-98 El Nino out of the ring,” Patzert said.

El Nino is already being blamed for drought and wildfires in Indonesia, and the United Nations is warning about millions at risk from hunger in eastern and southern Africa and Central America from drought.

El Nino is believed to have played a role in the storms this spring that caused floods and ended droughts in Colorado, Texas and Oklahoma. It’s also a factor in the fewer number of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean while there has been more of them in the eastern Pacific.

graphic of potential rain for el nino

Weather forecast for El Nino rainfall on the West Coast. Contributed by the Los Angeles Times

The unusually active hurricane season has already had impacts on California. Remnants of a summertime hurricane caused so much rain to pour down in Riverside County that an Interstate 10 bridge collapsed. It dumped so much hail near Lake Tahoe that snowplows were called to clear Interstate 80. Last month, an eastern Pacific hurricane, Patricia, became the strongest such cyclone recorded in the Western Hemisphere before it slammed into Mexico.

“It’s not as if we’re waiting for El Nino to actually manifest itself — it has in many ways already,” Patzert said. “There is no doubt: It’s coming.”

The big question is whether the above-average ocean temperatures will cause the mountains of Northern California — a critical source for the state’s largest reservoirs — to get rain instead of snow. Too much rain in those mountains would not be good for the state; snow is better because it can melt slowly in the spring and summer, gradually refilling reservoirs at a gentle pace. But precipitation coming down as rain there can force dam managers to flush out water to sea to keep reservoirs from overflowing dams.

“The really high elevations in the Sierra Nevada will do well,” Swain said, but it’s unknown whether the more important mid-level elevations will get rain or snow.

Scientists say they expect El Nino rains to be concentrated in the months of January, February and March.

“At some point, during December, we’ll transition to a much more active pattern” for storms, Swain said. “And by the end of December, and certainly by January, February and March, we’ll see above average precipitation, potentially well-above average.”

“El Nino is going to be a dominant factor this winter,” Swain said.

El Nino is also expected to provide once-in-a-generation waves on beaches not seen since the 1997-98 event, Patzert said, affecting the entire west coast of North America, “from British Columbia all the way down to Costa Rica.”

“The best surfing waves often precede the storms,” Patzert said. “If you have a great day of surfing _ Malibu or Mavericks or someplace _ during an El Nino, then in the next day or two you can expect a big storm.”

Photo: A spot in the Pacific Ocean is hitting record water temperatures, which is worrying climate scientists. Dave/Flickr

Fewer Hurricanes Predicted In Updated Forecast

Fewer Hurricanes Predicted In Updated Forecast

By Jenny Staletovich, The Miami Herald

Forecasters upped the odds for a slow hurricane season Thursday, predicting even fewer storms as record strong winds in the upper atmosphere keep a lid on brewing storms.

Just five to 10 storms are predicted over the rest of the season that runs through November, said Gerry Bell, lead hurricane forecaster for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Counting Arthur and Bertha — two hurricanes that arrived early in July and August — only one to four more hurricanes are forecast. The prediction for the number of major storms with winds topping 110 mph still stands at up to two.

“But that doesn’t mean the season is over,” Bell said. “Four hurricanes is a fair amount and all it takes is one of those to make landfall.”

In May, forecasters predicted eight to 13 named storms, three to six hurricanes, and one to two major hurricanes. They initially believed that an El Nino weather pattern would develop over warming Pacific waters and keep the season in relative check. They also forecast a slow monsoon season off West Africa, in addition to strong winds in the upper atmosphere.

As it turns out, the El Nino pattern has wilted and is now less likely to form during the Atlantic hurricane season. But the record upper winds and weak monsoon conditions appear to be enough to tamp down the season, Bell said. Tropical waters in the Atlantic that feed storms have also remained cooler than expected.

“They’re in place independent of El Nino,” he explained.

Upper atmosphere winds play a crucial role because they make it difficult for storms to grow in strength. Finding out what produced this year’s persistent pattern will take more study, he said, particularly if it relates to climate change.

Since 1981, an average hurricane season has produced 12 named storms, with six hurricanes and three major storms. For the last eight years, Florida — which has been hit more than any other state — has been struck by just one major storm despite more than 1,200 miles of coastline that open it up to storms from almost every direction.

While welcome, this week’s improved forecast should not be taken as a free pass for the season, Bell warned. Forecasters still can’t say in advance what direction storms may take and even one can make life miserable. Take Arthur, which turned the Fourth of July holiday into a frustrating evacuation for much of the Outer Banks when it struck as a Category 2 on July 3.

“There’s no way to predict so far in advance where a hurricane is going to strike,” Bell said. “Even a slow moving tropical storm can dump a foot of rain.”

AFP Photo

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Strong El Nino, Which Could Bring Soaking Winter Storms To California, Fizzling Out

Strong El Nino, Which Could Bring Soaking Winter Storms To California, Fizzling Out

By Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A powerful El Nino that had been emerging in the Pacific is fizzling out, evaporating hopes it will deliver a knockout punch to California’s three-year drought.

A new report from scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration decreases the probability of an El Nino — the condition that occurs when warm Pacific Ocean water at the equator affects the jet stream — to 65 percent starting in October, down from 82 percent in June.

More significantly, researchers said, the ocean water that had been warming steadily through the spring has cooled off in recent months. So most of the world’s leading meteorological organizations now say that if an El Nino arrives this winter, it is likely to be a weak or moderate one — not the kind historically linked with wetter-than-normal winters in California.

“It’s fair to say that it’s plateaued,” said Michelle L’Heureux, a meteorologist with the NOAA Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Md.

Other researchers are more blunt.

“We’re back to square one. It’s finished. I don’t think we even have an El Nino any more,” said Bill Patzert, a research scientist and oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena.

“If I were a betting man, I’d say it’s 75 percent that we’ll have another dry winter,” he said. “The unfortunate fact is that it looks like the last three years all over again.”

To be sure, California could still have a wet winter to help fill depleted reservoirs, replenish streams, and raise over-pumped water tables.

If a steady series of low-pressure systems develops off the Pacific Coast later in the year, that could bring tropical storms dumping rain in large amounts. The trend, known as an “atmospheric river” or “Pineapple Express,” has soaked the state in the past. But it has been all but shut down over the past three years as unusually persistent ridges of high pressure off the coast pushed winter storms north to Canada instead.

But the possibility that a strong El Nino won’t be there to help is “not good news, especially if we are using El Nino as an optimism index. It’s not what we want to see,” said meteorologist Jan Null, with Golden Gate Weather Services in Saratoga.

“It’s like in poker,” he added. “If you have one fewer spade out there, the odds of getting that flush are less.”

Generally speaking, the warmer the ocean water during El Nino years, the greater the likelihood of heavy winter rainfall. During mild El Nino years, when the ocean water is only slightly warmer than historic averages, there are just as many drier-than-average winters in California as soaking ones.

Since 1951, there have been six winters with strong El Nino conditions. In four of them, rainfall from the Bay Area to Bakersfield was at least 140 percent of the historic average, Null found.

But in the 16 winters since 1951 when there was a weak or moderate El Nino, California experienced below-normal rainfall in six of them. There was average rainfall in five and above-normal precipitation in the other five.

Thursday’s NOAA report was based on ocean temperature readings from dozens of buoys, wind measurements, satellite images, and more than a dozen computer models from scientific agencies around the world.

In April, the report noted, Pacific Ocean waters were nearly 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than normal along the equator from the surface down to about 1,000 feet deep. But by last month, they had cooled — and are now half a degree cooler than normal. Wind bursts from Indonesia that had pushed warm water toward South America and the United States diminished. And huge amounts of heat dissipated and failed to trigger weather changes in the atmosphere.

“We’ve seen very lackluster atmospheric response,” said NOAA’s L’Heureux. “What typically happens with warm water in the eastern Pacific is that you see rainfall and winds shifting around. But it didn’t happen. It didn’t coalesce.”

As a result, none of the world’s major meteorological agencies is forecasting strong El Nino conditions this year. Most expect that Pacific waters will range from 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the historic average this fall, which would signal a weak El Nino.

Photo via WikiCommons

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El Nino Usually Means Fewer Hurricanes For S.C.

El Nino Usually Means Fewer Hurricanes For S.C.

By Joey Holleman, The State (Columbia, S.C.)

COLUMBIA, S.C. — As the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season begins to heat up this summer so does the ocean surface in the equatorial Pacific, and that’s good news for South Carolina.

The warming in the Pacific, known as El Nino, affects weather patterns worldwide. In terms of hurricanes, “El Nino is our friend,” said Hope Mizzell, state climatologist with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.

In the past eight El Nino summers — 1982, 1986, 1987, 1991, 1994, 1997, 2002, and 2009 — no hurricane has so much as sniffed the South Carolina coast. Gordon in 1994 did hit hurricane strength briefly as it did an odd loop out in the Atlantic off the state before coming ashore several days later as a tropical depression that simply brought much-needed rain.

The sea surface in the equatorial Pacific has slowly been warming in recent months. Most forecasts have the temperatures hitting weak to moderate El Nino levels in August.

The El Nino tends to create wind shear over the tropical Atlantic that suppresses hurricane formation in systems coming off Africa, Mizzell said. Most of the storm systems that have impacted South Carolina during past El Nino years emerged from the Gulf of Mexico.

As hurricane season hits its typical August and September peak in South Carolina, the slowly strengthening El Nino is comforting. But, like all historical weather patterns, it’s not a sure thing. Already, a system that formed off Africa this week seems to be bucking the trend.

Also, even weak tropical systems can cause serious problems. In 1994, Tropical Storm Beryl had weakened to a tropical depression as it moved through Georgia from the Gulf of Mexico, but it packed enough moisture to cause the worst flooding in 60 years on the Saluda River in the South Carolina mountains.

In 2002, Kyle formed in the central Atlantic, did a couple of loops, then hugged the S.C. coast at tropical storm strength for a destructive day. It tossed out an F2 tornado that destroyed 28 structures and damaged another 78 in Georgetown County, injuring eight people. Serious flooding occurred as far inland as the I-95 corridor.

While El Nino usually means fewer hurricanes form in the Atlantic, “there’s no correlation between the number that form and the number that make landfall,” Mizzell said. And it only takes one hurricane hitting the coast to cause major damage. For instance, only four hurricanes caused damage in 1992, when El Nino conditions were weakening in the Pacific. One of those, Andrew, devastated South Florida and Louisiana.

Despite strolling into the heart of hurricane season with our friend El Nino, “we always need to be prepared,” Mizzell said.

Photo: NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center via Flickr

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